


Mater Dolorosa

by sunbreaksdown



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-22
Updated: 2011-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 23:19:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbreaksdown/pseuds/sunbreaksdown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She might have to live in the darkness and give up the sun, but he brings her into a world of colour.</p><p>The Dolorosa and Signless, from their first day together until their last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mater Dolorosa

     They say the jade in her veins makes her not only suited for the task, but fated to fulfil it. She's spent so long seeing by touch, by the feel of the rocky walls beneath her fingertips and the taste of the air, more stagnant the deeper she goes, that colour no longer holds much meaning to her. She discerns one dark shape from another. The floor is uneven, steep in places, littered with loose rocks, and she will not be safe for seeing. There are torches she can carry, of course, but the light always finds itself overwhelmed by the darkness. It splutters and fades in the draft brought up by the tunnels that lead to the deeper caverns, and throws itself from walls, illuminating her surroundings for half a second, if that. It barely creates a clear picture, and never makes time enough for colour.

     But she does not mind, because what she does is important. Not only that, but it is an honour and a privilege to be asked to watch over a Mother Grub, though there was no real asking in the request; for much of her young life, the portion spent upon the surface, she knew that she had no choice in the matter. It is this or it is nothing, and this is certainly something. Something worth sacrificing the colour in her life for, the sun itself, or so she tells herself. She dreams of it, sometimes, when her mind will allow her to, but it always comes out pale and waning, more like a moon caught behind a veil of cloud than a burning star. Everyone has a job to do, and this is hers. What she has gained should be worth far more than what she has lost, but she's never stopped to total it all out.

     There is peace down there, or at least an illusion of it. The tasks that wigglers are expected to go through in order to prove themselves are far from her, take place in rocky alcoves that she dare not enter; because if she interferes, then there is no chance of them having proven their own worth. She knows what these challenges consist of, having long since gone through them herself, but time has allowed her to convince herself that they are less brutal than they were. She has survived them and does not believe herself irreparably damaged for them, so it must be the same for all trolls.

     When she hears what she believes to be cries of distress and elation, of pain and victory, she blocks these out, and tells herself that it's only the wind being carried across rough surfaces. She clings to the belief that these young trolls have a chance of a life that will do something other than tear them down, a fate that won't see them either impaled or with another's head on a pike. Most of all, in the Brooding Caverns, she can ignore colour, can ignore the caste system.

     When the Mother Grub produces her thousands upon thousands of eggs, she vigilantly watches over them. There are those that would steal them away, great hulking predators from Alternia's surface and beneath it alike, and even trolls, too; low-bloods who would see the darker blue and purple eggs shattered before they are born and have the chance to treat the bottom of the hemospectrum in the same way, and those at the opposite end of the scale who wish to prove themselves by taking a culling into their own hands. She has protected them countless times, has laid out her own life for the taking, should it come to it. It never does, though her blood has been spilt on many occasions.

     It drips from her, pooling at her feet. In the caverns, it looks like a warm, black mess, and in the same way, the blood that shows through the thin surface of the eggs is incomprehensible to her. Whether red or green or purple, it doesn't matter; heaped together in the dark, one egg is indiscernible from the next, and so she treats them all equally. She treats them all well, as if each and every one is worth more than the sum of her own parts, having never become disillusioned with her task. Being charged with a duty as important and as rare as hers has not left much time for her to absorb rumours about her predecessors, but some part of her knows that those who came before her must have buckled, eventually becoming jaded; to them, each of the eggs must have seemed disposable.

     Not all of her duties require so much of a potential sacrifice, though. She ensures that the genetic material finds its way to the Mother Grub, though she never lays a hand on a pail. That task is reserved for those who bring it down, who have no other prospects in life but to collect this slurry of fluids from others. She does not talk to these trolls, for if she did, she might realise that she missed conversation and consider herself to be lonely. There's talk of them being replaced by drones soon, and she supposes that would be for the best. There is the Mother Grub for company, of course, and she looks after her, soothes her. It is no easy task for her, no matter how many trolls consider it to be perfectly natural. Every time she produces the eggs she grows weak, faint, as if she may never recover from the energy she's exerted; which is why there's always someone to look after her, to ensure that the troll race is allowed to thrive.

     Her role is not one that comes with financial gain, not something that is done for reward. But sometimes, those who chose her for the task will bring votive offerings, as if to better placate her into the role. She asks for material, and from it makes a uniform. What she's given is black and jade, and though she works by candle light, it is difficult to see any real difference between the shades; in the end, she works by touch. The jade fabric is softer, smoother beneath her fingertips, and from it she makes a map across her outfit, as if her blood colour could actually ever lead her anywhere.

     She used to do that a lot. Used to make clothing for herself, for others. It's just another thing that she no longer needs to occupy her time with.

     There are errands to be run, sometimes. She is allowed to leave the caverns for short stretches of time to do what must be done, what only somebody in her station can do. She wonders, more often than she would like to admit to, what would happen if she fled and never returned. No doubt she would be hunted down, and then it would be the scaffold for her, for daring to defy her destiny, for shirking such a noble calling. It is good, then, that she only wonders, and never truly considers doing. During these errands, there are more flashes of light, more glimpses of what could be colour. But these do not stay with her for long, and her mind cannot seem to process them. To her, when she is outside of the caverns, it is as if she lives somebody else's life, and she cannot compile what she's seen, cannot drain the colour from it and let it run through her every nerve, because she simply didn't see it in the first place.

*

     It is on one of these errands, on a night as black and white as any other, that things begin to change.

     She is to go to the nearest weaponry and have her blades resharpened. It seems that there have been many beasts to wrestle with lately, and metal does not stay sharp for long when her foe is fast and a great many of her blows clatter against the rocks. The grubs are all undergoing their tasks, now, so she can take reprieve for a moment.

     She has walked this way many times before, and remembers it well. The cool air immediately hits her, so different from her life underground, but her feet do not press against the ground as they should. It slants down, and when she looks around, really opens her eyes to the world around her, she sees that there has been some sort of impact. She finds it strange, having not heard any disturbance from down in the caverns, but concludes that there are many disturbances down there, all of which she does her best not to hear.

     And so to the centre she goes, feeling safe when the ground around her does not bleed any heat; it has had time enough to cool, and the remnants of whatever struck the earth have likely long since been plundered. But there, in the very heart of the crater's dip, is the last thing she expected to find: a grub. It is not what she sees what initially surprises her, for she has seen thousands upon thousands of them in her short life, but the location itself. She moves without thinking, certain that this too must be part of her duty, part of the reason she was given life and permitted to crawl from the caverns in the first place.

     Picking up the grub, she sees something very strange indeed. He is red, bright red, and if she wasn't holding him, she might believe that he was burning. She looks down at him, and it's like seeing the blazing Alternian sun; and all at once, she can't remember how she ever managed to forget such a distinct colour. She knows that there's never been anything like this, and it would be better for the grub to be culled, at least according to the society she serves. She considers if she could convince herself that he came to be here by logical means; that something did indeed sneak past her into the caverns and steal for itself an armful of eggs and then abandon one when the moon hit its shell and they saw the colour inside; but she is very good at her job, unquestionably so, and cannot find space to doubt herself. Besides, there are no fragments of a shell anywhere around.

     She accepts the impossible. The grub isn't from the caverns, but that doesn't mean that he isn't hers to watch over. She pulls him to her chest when he begins to squirm. Looking over her shoulder, she sees only darkness, but she knows that inside of that shroud are the winding tunnels of the caverns, the Mother Grub at the heart of them. And for the first time in sweeps, she decides that she will not grope blindly through the darkness in order to find her way. She raises her eyes to the moon, and lets that guide her, back turned firmly to the Brooding Caverns far behind.

     Rare though she is, they will find somebody else to take her post. There's no guilt attached to what she does, and she doesn't for a single moment believe that she's abandoning her duties. This is simply something far more important, something she can finally have faith in.

*

     Back before the jade blood filled her eyes and she was deemed ready to be marched into the caverns, her hive was in the desert. It was not an easy place to live in; or rather, would not have been easy for anyone else. But she loved the sun, and it in turn did not burn out her sight or scorch her skin when she spent long hours out in it. It was then that she knew that she would always be different, and that being different often came with the stigma of being alone.

     And she was, for the longest time, both on the surface and beneath it, accepting it as the way of things. Things have changed, however. When she left the caverns behind and took the grub in her arms that night, it was as if she had finally proven her worth, had crawled out onto the surface for the very first time. With the way that she looked around in awe, noticing things that had past her by for decades, it may well have been. Unlike her, the grub couldn't stand the sun's unforgiving ways, and so she could not keep wandering until it rose, though she ached for it.

     They live in the sands now, though they do not have a hive. The grub is no longer a grub, so much as a young troll of two sweeps old who can now walk on his own two feet. Life hasn't been easy for him, and she's made certain of it. In the caverns he would never have had a chance, and even if the tasks hadn't bested him, no lusus would ever have taken them under their wing. Or claw, or scale, or pincer. She puts him through tasks of her own, and their life itself is a challenge. When he was small, when he still scurried along the ground, she would make him walk for as long as he could, for longer than he believed himself able to. She was tough on him, but she was not brutal; when his legs finally gave way, she would pick him up, hold him in her arms, and carry him the rest of the way.

     She knows that it's inevitable he'll grow up, and that with age will come the desire to understand. There'll be all sorts of questions, and she knows that she can't be anything but honest with him. He'll want to know why they have no hive, why they have to keep on moving each and every day, though they never seem to have a destination ahead of them; he'll want to know why she has taken him in, not a lusus, not a hulking creature from depths even deeper than the ones she was confined to; he'll want to know his shirt is a blank, why he possesses no symbol of his own. He'll want to know why the desert winds are so cruel and relentless, but for now, all of his energy goes into keeping hold of her hand as they stride across dunes, looking for the next place to take shelter from the sun that's soon to rise.

     In truth, she doesn't know what she'll tell him. She sees the way he looks at her, sees the light reflect from his eyes, like some part of him believes that she has all of the answers to absolutely all of life's mysteries. She wants him to cling onto this part of himself for as long as he can, because there must at least be some comfort to be garnered from that, and though she knows this to be impossible, she can at least hope for time. In time, she might be able to find some of the answers he'll one day need.

     They find shelter for the night when the sky is already threatening to brighten. It's large crack running from the floor of a canyon, probably forged by the intensity of the heat centuries ago, and acts as a sort of cave for them both. It'll serve well for days, while they regather their strength and hunt out resources. They huddle close in the cave, though there is no need to keep warm, and she tells him stories, tales lifted and altered in small ways from the books she remembers reading when she too was young.

     When a hint of light begins to spill into the entrance of the cave, but never threatens to creep closer, she feels him grow tired in her arms. She presses her lips to the top of his head, and murmurs his name into his hair, ever so quietly, as if she fears the desert wind might steal it away.

*

     They come across travelling peddlers as they reach the edges of civilisation, though they never have anything of worth to trade them. They simply stop and talk, and trust that the directions they have been given for free aren't faulty.

     She has no desire to keep the boy from mixing with others, from seeing the truth of the world. The entirety of the desert may be a hive of sorts for them, but that does not stop them from going into towns, from seeing the workings of their culture. He learns about the caste system early on. He asks about his own bright red blood, and with a soft smile and a distant look in her eyes, she kneels in front of him. She brushes the unruly strands of hair from his eyes, and tells him to never be ashamed of the colour of his blood; but to act ashamed, if he must, if he has no other choice, so that everyone is forced to underestimate him. So that he can keep hold of his life.

     He sees the suffering. Sees the executions happen out in the street, sees the way that people pass them by as if they're nothing more than a stall they don't wish to stop by at. He sees the way that this, the strife and the fear in people's eyes, is all so normal, so accepted, and it's not until she makes her way through the bustling crowds with him that she begins realise just how unsettling it truly is.

     For a long time, he remains quiet about it all. Troubled, but in a way that leads to contemplation, rather than him ignoring it. When the questions come as she knew they always would, they come much later on that she expected them to. He is four when he really starts inquiring about the way of things, but to her surprise, he does not ask questions about his own unusual upbringing; he asks about their world, and why the people in it treat one another as they do.

     She gives him the same smile that offered up when he asked about his place on the hemospectrum, and tells him that it's just the way of the world; that's how everything slots together and falls into place, and that won't change unless the world does. Later, when they leave another town behind, he tells her that she always looks the saddest when she forces herself to smile.

*

     The dreams start when he is five; or else he has always had them, but it's not until then that he can no longer keep them to himself.

     He is elated to speak of them at first. He gesticulates wildly as they sit around a fire, cooking their latest kill, telling her all about what he's seen. The words flow quickly, sentences come out without relation to one another, but he somehow creatures a picture. Not a whole, complete one that she could spend hours staring at and pick out all the little details, but snippets of ones. Flashes of light that leave a certain grain on things and sap the colours away. His expression brightens as he speaks of what he sees, brief seconds of a world in which the people don't turn against each other and the streets don't fill with blood, until he is bright red and almost breathless.

     Perplexed by it all, she can only smile. She is certain it's all influenced by what she said about the world changing, but his enthusiasm for what he's dreamt warms her. He is happy, if only for a short moment that runs between his fingertips like the sea of sand that always surrounds them, and happiness is not something that people like them often come across. Not from external sources, at any rate: she would never give up what she has found in him, and never once thinks back to the Brooding Caverns, to her old life there.

     The dreams continue every night, until he begins to wake from them. Violently, at that, as if what he sees overwhelms him. The images eventually become less clear, until they are all flashes and brief glances of something truly beyond his comprehension. He clenches his fist when he wakes in a sweat, cursing himself for being too young to understand, and sounding unsettlingly older for having said it. He claims they aren't dreams at all, but rather visions, and she begins to worry. He claims that they aren't born of his imagination, but rather pushed into his mind, and forcefully so at that.

     Being nomadic as they are, ever moving from one place to the next, they have no luxuries, certainly don't have the comfort of a recuperacoon. She is old already, has lived out enough sweeps to be able to assuage anything unpleasant from her own mind without the use of sedatives, but it can't be the same for him. His think pan is still developing, is malleable, and easily influenced by even his own subconscious. Gathering what funds she can, she purchases sopor slime in the next time they are in a town, and has him sleep in it. There is not much, and it is shallow, but it covers his ears at least, and so should be enough.

     But even that doesn't help. It may be because of the slime or in spite of it, but his dreams, his visions, only become stronger. There are brief seconds when they could even be described as vivid, but he can barely hold on to them. All she can do for him is listen, is to remain silent as he desperately scrambles for the words that elude him; as the images printed on the inside of his eyelids flicker and fade when he tries to look directly at them, tries to describe them.

     She listens, and over time realises what she must have always known to have been true: these aren't products of his own mind. Her faith in him is unwavering, and she only wishes that she could find the answers for him. She doesn't know if he speaks of the past or the future, of this world or another, but there is one thing for certain.

     She would much rather live in the world that bleeds into his dreams than this one.

*

     When he is seven and she has long since stopped counting the sweeps, the dreams have become something they live with. It would be strange for her to wake and not hear of them. She allows herself to awaken an hour before he does, allows herself to watch the last of the sun dip beneath the horizon, and then closes her eyes, imagining it in reverse. In the pitch black of her mind, she sees the sun rise, and feels the warmth wash down over her before everything is all bright lights, all colours beyond recognition. These are the brief moments she reserves for herself, the dreams she wishes she saw when she slept.

     He is strong and smart in all regards. She's raised him well, and never once stopped to consider that a lusus may do a better job. He can fight, can wield all the weapons she's presented to him, and knows how to survive for perigees in the desert. He can take down any beast, shield himself from any desert storm, and find water enough to keep himself going. But more than that, more importantly than anything he can do with his body, he has compassion.

     She knows it would never have come about if he had been taken in by a lusus, if she did not patiently listen to him detail his dreams. Sometimes, she fears that they'll rip him apart by the seams, and that she'll be too out of practise to stitch him back together. But her fears are unfounded, and even she knows this much; he is strong in body and mind, and never bemoans his lot in life.

     Sometimes, he'll say that they must have stepped on every grain of sand in the desert by now, and so surely they should be able to settle down somewhere, to which she'll reply that he's being foolish, because the wind picks up the desert and rearranges it as it sees fit, so there is always some new accumulation of sand for them to traverse across. It is light-hearted, and he never truly means to complain; he only worries about the suffering of others, reality made starker by the depth of his dreams.

     As he gets older, she encourages him to speak about his visions. To others, because she knows that people other than the two of them need to hear what she says. She wonders, at times, if she only pushes him so because she is blinded by her loyalties to him, him having been her ward for so long; but her own mind remains clear, and she knows that there is something more to it than that biases of a custodian.

     And so their visits to the towns become more and more frequent. He speaks out in a small voice at once, not wanting to bother those who don't wish to listen, and as such, for the first few perigees he is left mumbling to himself. When people pay attention to him, it is to regard him with confused, irritated expressions, not certain of what he's getting at but hearing enough to know they don't like it. He speaks of virtues, but to them, he may as well be condemning them all. He speaks out against their way of life, and though his voice may be low, almost hushed, it resounds through the dusty streets.

     One day, one person listens. That's all it takes, and his voice becomes louder, more confident, though never intrusive. Another person stops to consider his message, and then two, three, four more. Once they first latch onto his words, they find it almost impossible to let go. He speaks with such certainty, such conviction, that people can't help but want to believe him, even if they've never so much as had faith in the sun rising and setting every day.

     They agree to spread the word, his word, and try to do so with the same passion in their voice, rising up from out of their chests. And then, a sweep and a half since he starts preaching, he arrives at a city and realising the impact he's already made without ever having set foot there before. They know of him, and have a name from him: Signless. They say it, and in the same breath make it sound like _Nameless_.

     She doesn't mind. The name she gave him is his own, and he'll never leave it behind, but his message is more important than that. He needs to embrace this title, to exploit it for all it's worth. He becomes Signless, this role that was created for him by followers not yet converted, and allows his reputations to proceed him. There is a ripple that spreads across Alternia; only faint, and only on the very surface, but it speaks of things to come. Of the things that could change, and the world that could one day replace this one.

*

     The two of them have travelled alone for nine sweeps when one evening, they are followed. Signless is used to people approaching him, to wishing to hear more of his wisdoms as if there's anything he'd hold back from the people, his people, during sermons. Sometimes they simply wish to chat, to uplift their own spirits, enough to consider doing a good deed in turn. But they have never been persistently followed for days and days before.

     Signless' custodian looks over her shoulder at the determined young troll, no older than Signless himself, as she moves across the hot sands in the dark. She looks at her curiously, considering her to be an odd sort of creature; slightly feral in her movements, but oddly graceful in them, too. She has seen her at many of the sermons, ever since Signless and herself found her in the depths of a jungle, being attacked by a pack of howlbeasts. They had saved her, and immediately the poor orphaned troll (for she had to be orphaned, because no lusus sprung to her aid), clung to them. She now claims to want to follow them, to follow them anywhere, but neither of them are certain whether it's because she truly believes in the message, or because she simply feels that she owes them her life.

     They relent, eventually. They allow her to travel with them, and she does not slow them down. She listens to each word Signless speaks, and with great respect and devotion, carefully records each and every one on paper, before learning them all by heart. The three of them travel for perigees and perigees, and yet her dedication does not waver, she is no less awed with any of his sermons than she was the first; and slowly but surely, Signless begins to confide in her. He tells her things that he cannot bear to share with his custodian, fearing that he is too close to her, that his words will cause her undue stress, and that isn't something he wants.

     The girl with the yellowish green blood listens with an open mind, and it is not long until she is his first true Disciple.

*

     Their numbers grow again, over time. Although they have hundreds and hundreds of believers and allies spread across Alternia, only the three of them travel together, Signless not wishing to put others at danger. It's the very thing that Signless' message goes against, and so he strictly forbids it, until one day he meets a yellow blood with a powerful mind. A mind powerful in a way different from his own, and then there are four, the few he trusts with not only his own life but Alternia's fate, too. At times, it doesn't seem as if there were ever only truly two of them alone, out in the desert; they were merely waiting to be joined by the others, had always known they were coming.

     His custodian has always believed in every word he has ever spoken, but she does not allow herself to be the most devoted, the most dedicated. Her faith in him has stemmed from the moment she first held him in her arms, and she freely gave it to him; he never did anything to earn it. He needs someone by his side who was not always fated to become a believer, who can prove to him the importance of his message, of how his visions really can and will change the world.

     His Disciple comes in here. From a distance, and with a faint smile, she watches the two of them grow close. They travel across the raging oceans, eventually, and there she sees the two of them on the deck: Signless' arms wrapped loosely around her waist, possessive but never restrictive, and he murmurs to her how the world will change, and how it will one day be theirs. She leaves the two of them alone, after this, and stares out at the sea. The change in scenery does nothing to shift her thoughts, and she thinks of the two of them, of how they are not confined to any quadrants. They've found something far more powerful than that, and in the same way, she knows that what she herself feels for Signless, whose name she never speaks unless they are alone together, is beyond anything felt before. It is not what a lusus should feel, nothing from any quadrant, even with the romance drained from it.

     It's impossible to describe. It's just something _more_ , something that makes him the most important thing to her on the planet, in the universe. It'd be the same way even if he wasn't destined for great things, even if he didn't see ripples of visions that'll one day change the tides.

     She knows what Signless has with the Disciple is strong, is real, because it makes him a better man. His speeches and sermons have never lacked life before, but now they surge with new energy, with a spark of something that could light up the whole world, given a chance.

     He comes to her one day, and asks why she doesn't find someone of her own. He's grown now, so there's no need to fret and spend all of her time looking out for him, to which she only laughs. She tells him that there's simply no one out there for her, not on this planet, at least; and he looks downhearted to hear this, no matter how she jokes, before she ruffles his hair and tells him not to pout. Nobody wants a leader with a longer face.

*

     She has known since the moment she found him in the crater, having fallen from the sky and higher still, that their lives would not be easy. There was always been a lingering feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, but she has long since been able to drown any panic it causes out. It becomes part of her, something natural, just like the way her chest rises and falls as she takes in deep breaths of fresh air on corners of the globe she never would've dared to dream of travelling to before.

     But the point still stands. They are in danger, and always have been. It starts off small, and the news of what happens trickles to them slowly; slowly enough that they can write things off as one-offs, for the first few sweeps. People known to openly follow Signless are found dead in the streets in some towns, though it seems like this could be a coincidence. People are found dead, left to wither away under the blazing Alternian sun, day in and day out, and it's one of the things he's doing his best to fight against. But then the perpetrators make their work more evident, make sure that there's no room for doubt left.

     The rip the signs from the shirts of the dead, leaving them as a warning to all others who would see Alternia change.

     They are attacked, from time to time. Signless will defend himself, will take down any frenzied wild animal, but will not spill the blood of another living troll. He makes certain to set this as an example to his followers, so that they might do the same, and is lucky that they are able to hold their ground, are able to merely knock their attackers out and leave them tied up and flee before they catch up with them for a second time. They are not welcomed in many towns, and they are spoken out against in almost all of them. Fights break out in the street in Signless' name, and it seems that not only believers follow him; people get carried away in the moment, and defend his honour with fists and blades, having never heard a single word of his sermons before.

     He grows depressed, but shows no signs of being defeated. She comforts him as best she can, though she knows that things will only get worse. They've become too powerful, have drawn too much attention to themselves. It is heartbreaking to see him question himself so, to wonder if it would be better if he ceased spreading his word for all the trouble it's caused. Thinking to silence him, desperate to stop him from berating himself, she wraps her arms around him, pulling him close.

     It is strange, but not uncomfortable. She remembers when he was a boy, when he barely reached her waist, and she could lift him up into her arms, hold him up high, without a hint of strain. Now he is grown, and he stands far taller than she does, draped in a cape and hood that she herself has sewn for him. His shoulders are strong, broad, and she buries her face in them, and even as his arms wrap around her back, large, calloused hands pressing against her shoulder blades, in her mind and every nerve, he doesn't feel like any less of the grub that he once was, so easy to cradle in her arms.

     She lets out a short, startled laugh, and then breaks out into tears. For so long she's refrained from doing so, for all the sweeps they've been together, not wanting him to see any weakness or fear in her. She can't hold back any longer, and doesn't feel ashamed for doing so. He looks down in concern, tilting her head back so that he can look her in the eyes, and ask her what's wrong.

     She simply shakes her head and laughs through her tears, saying that she remembers when he was two and asked her when his horns would start growing and be as grand as hers were; and his face quirks into a smile, bemused to his very core, and then he kisses her forehead in an attempt to cover up the fact that he's still terribly sensitive about his horns.

*

     She has always liked the Disciple. She is a beautiful young woman, lively and warm, who gives as much to Signless as she takes from his teachings. She finds that there is much to learn from the Disciple, methods of survival that she herself never thought of, new practises of patience to follow, and considers her to be part of something trolls don't have a word for. It is as if she too is her custodian, even if she has not watched over her since she hatched.

     When the high bloods come for them and Signless and the Psiioniic are forced down upon the ground and into irons, she holds the Disciple's hand so tightly that her skin turns white, jade around the edges.

     It's not long before they're bound, either. From there, their sweeps and sweeps of work are rendered as nothing, though in their cells, Signless tells them that they shouldn't worry, shouldn't fear what's going to happen. His word will live on through his people, and the four of them may well find themselves in a better world much sooner than any of them expected to.

     From there on out, their lives unravel with a rapidity that they can't afford to be put through. There is questioning, and there is punishment for silence, but none of that matters to her. They speak of her blood as if it is something separate from her being, something she does not deserve and thus taints by forcing it to surge through her veins; they know who she is, and what her duty once was. She does speak once, only to explain herself. It's the only thing she trusts that she can say that won't inadvertently betray Signless in some way. She tells her captors that remaining stationed in the Brooding Caverns was never her true duty, and that the reason she had really been on Alternia was to step into that crater and find a grub who otherwise was destined to become an orphan, should he live long enough to be considered one.

     They do not care for what she has to say, but she does not mind. She knows that nothing she tells them will make any difference, because they will punish them all for how they have poisoned the minds of thousands upon thousands of those on Alternia. The Psiioniic is already gone, and it would not surprise her if she was to be taken next. Generally, the high bloods care more for Signless than all of his followers put together, and wish to take the Disciple, his most devout, and make an example out of her.

     The last time she ever sees Signless alive, before the irons wrap around his wrists, before they twist and invert his every word and cause the goodness that once rose from his throat to become bitter and burn red-hot, scolding his own lips and causing something in the depths of the universe to flare up in anger, he apologises to her. She looks at him, as incredulous as she would be if he began speaking in tongues; she says that she does not know why he feels he should apologise to her, when she should be the one who always looks after him, who always protects him, no matter how old her gets, no matter how much taller and stronger than her he is.

     He says that he led her into this life, and asks if she ever regrets it. She looks at him with a smile, and though she knows it to be a sad one, it is not forced; it is not difficult to form, and she does not mourn either her past, present or future through the expression. She reaches through the bars between them, and places a hand on his cheek. She spends a long, long time staring at the red of his eyes, so much so that he looks as if he has long since given up on an answer. But then she says no, not at all; he took her out of a life of black and white, and let her feel the colours of the sun once again.

     It's his turn to look perplexed. He doesn't understand the meaning of her words when she pieces them together like that, but after a moment, something in him shifts and he understands the weight behind him. He covers her hand with one of his, and thanks her for all that she's done; for how she sacrificed herself to take him in, even though the world would never permit him to survive; and because of all she's taught him, the kindness she's shown him, he was able to truly believe that his visions were grounded in reality, even if it wasn't this one; he thanks her for his name.

     After they take him, after his screams become heavy and then hollow when the arrow pierces his side, some part of her mind slips. She thinks she might forget her own name; she fears the shock of it all will turn her mind fallow. There are only irons for her to be bound in now, restraints that are less literal, that slip into her mind and seep beneath the sinew under her skin, the very fibre of her being.

     With Signless gone, the word can only spread in hushed tones, and the followers fear for their own lives, and dwindle until there are only hundreds of them. Much of the truth of what happens is forgotten; no names are recalled, not even by the Disciple; and long after they are all gone, dead and buried or at the mercy of a fate far more brutal, they are spoken of by titles. As if they are from further in the past than they truly were, when names were not assigned, and people earnt epithets throughout their lives, through their deeds.

     They speak of Signless, and how he suffered; or they speak of the Sufferer, and how he was signless. They speak of the Disciple, and how desperately she scrawled the records of his teaching across cave walls in animal blood, until her fingers became so worn that her writings were all an odd hue of yellowish green. They speak of the Psiioniic, and how death would have been a blessing for him.

     And then, with great reverence, they take a moment, and speak of the one who made it all possible. They do not speak of what happened to her, because some fates are worth lingering over, but instead focus on what unravelled while she lived, sacrificing the sun for the one who fell from the stars. They call her the Dolorosa, and remember what she is bound to have forgotten.


End file.
